Archives for January 2010
January 29th, 2010
Britons piled into Spanish property and got burnt. The Germans bided their time. Now they’re starting to come back, should we follow? We may fancy ourselves as a nation of hot shot property investors, but are we really any good at investing abroad? Not if our record in Spain is anything ...
Continue reading Learning from German Property Buyers in Spain
January 28th, 2010
The number of Brits buying euros for property purchases has increased in the last few days after sterling reached a rate of €1.15 for the first time since August 2008. Foreign currency brokers have seen a 40% increase in clients buying euros, while new enquiries have shot up by 24%. “A number ...
Continue reading Brits Buy As Pound Gains Against Euro
January 27th, 2010
According to data released today by the National Statistics Institute (INE), the number of home mortgages issued during November 2009 was 52,043, representing a growth of 1.8 percent over the same month in 2008 and the first recorded rise since April 2007. The volume of loan capital amounted to 6010.5 million, ...
Continue reading New Mortgages Rise For First Time in 18 Months
January 27th, 2010
UK inflation lively but public sector borrowing and retail sales disappoint. Euro coasts, uninspired and unhindered by the data. It was a reasonably good week for sterling but it could have been better. From €1.1350 it had added two cents by Wednesday but the following two days were less than helpful. ...
Continue reading Sterling Let Down By The Data
January 27th, 2010
New build property prices are going to carry on falling this year, at least as much as last year’s 6% decline, say the top management of Sociedad de Tasación, one of Spain’s leading appraisal companies. According to José Luis Estevas-Guilmain and Juan Fernández-Aceytuno, president and managing director respectively of Sociedad de ...
Continue reading New Property Prices to Continue Falling
January 26th, 2010
Euro lobby groups are making the most of Spain's new prominence on the world stage. They're making sure that Mr. Zapatero is painfully aware of Spain's continued property-related human rights violations. Euro MP's have renewed their threat to impose sanctions over Valencia's ridiculous land-grab laws. And, in another article not included ...
Continue reading Spain: Front & Centre of the EU Stage
January 26th, 2010
Euro-MPs have demanded the immediate repeal of notorious Spanish land laws that continue to wreck the holiday-home dreams of Britons in the Valencia region. Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, visiting the European Parliament in Strasbourg, was warned he could face a campaign to stop EU subsidies to Spain unless he ...
Continue reading EU Sanctions Against Land Grab Spain?
January 25th, 2010
Spanish house prices are still 55% above their fair value despite Spain’s property market crash, claimed a recent article in The Economist magazine that caused a stir in the Spanish press. But what nobody seemed to notice is that The Economist have got it wrong, for which we can blame ...
Continue reading Economist: Spanish Property 55% Overpriced?
January 22nd, 2010
Margarite Auken, Danish MEP for the Green party, demanded an official report from Madrid on how it will protected property rights for people who have purchased illegal homes. Margarite Auken, Danish MEP for the Green party and author of the controversial "Auken Report", which recommended EU sanctions against Spain if it ...
Continue reading MEPs Demand Action from Spain
January 21st, 2010
Risk measurement agency Moody’s said Spanish recession will continue until the second quarter of 2010. These forecasts are contained in a statement, arguing that the weakness of economic activity, coupled with rising unemployment and slower income, will "depress" the residential Spanish property market, which estimates that prices have fallen 9, 5% ...
Continue reading Spanish Recession to Persist in 2010
January 20th, 2010
MPC member sets the ball rolling with talk of higher UK interest rates. Greece's fiscal problems worry the euro. After a day's hesitation in the vicinity of Monday's €1.11 starting point the pound set off higher. It was not quite a straight-line advance (it almost never is) but sterling did not ...
Continue reading Broad Improvement For Sterling
January 20th, 2010
Another demolition order has been served in Albox - meaning that nine families have now been notified that their properties must be demolished as illegal. This Tuesday, the day after some 700 people marched through the streets of Almería against the plans to demolish the homes of 8 British families in ...
Continue reading More Albox Demolitions Threatened
January 19th, 2010
The A Place in the Sun Live show will be on in London at Earl's Court from 26th to 28th March. Aside from an impressive list of attractions, there are two extra reasons to put the dates in your diary. First, we'll be offering free tickets to the show - ...
Continue reading Free Tickets to A Place in the Sun Live
January 19th, 2010
José Zapatero is pursuing an ambitious economic agenda, despite being by far the weakest EU president ever. The Spanish PM is the first to share the EU's six-month rotating presidency with a permanent president in Brussels. At the same time, his country is suffering its worst economic crisis in 60 years, jibing ...
Continue reading Spain Leads EU – But Not by Example
January 18th, 2010
Spanish banks and cajas (savings banks) may have to deal with a tidal wave of repossessions this year, with big implications for the property market, according to a recent article in the Spanish daily Publico. To make matters worse, the auctions banks normally use to dispose of repossessions are struggling to ...
Continue reading Spanish Repossessions Could Cripple Market
